


Fissures in a Stalwart Rock

by Quivo (quivo)



Series: Scenes on a Darkened Path [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Betrayal, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Guilt, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-18 19:42:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14859059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quivo/pseuds/Quivo
Summary: Peter has always been good at lying. When he tells himself he's only doing what has to be done, he can almost believe it.





	Fissures in a Stalwart Rock

**Author's Note:**

> Started as a snippet inspired by a 100 words challenge on [fail_fandomanon](https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org), and just sort of ballooned very nicely. The character deaths in this are also in _A Lily Growing Thorns_ , and are warned for in detail at the end. 
> 
> This story can be read out of order, or without reading the rest of the series it's part of, but it won't make as much sense.

## Fissures in a Stalwart Rock

### cracks beneath the surface

Peter had never been stupid. He liked, because of the way he looked (short, fat, round, _soft_ , soft just like his father, was what Mum had always liked to say), he liked to wear it like a cloak, sometimes. It was easier. People were still just as cruel, but it was easier to bear it when he knew they weren’t really looking at him.

That he pretended at stupidity didn’t mean he never did anything that was stupid, of course.

Case in point: Voldemort.

“The address,” that man demanded, coolly, and Peter sobbed and nodded and wrote the pub address down and offered it up with a shaking hand. The parchment wafted out of his grip without a sound. “You may go.”

A truly stupid man might have stayed, might have prostrated himself, might have begged, again. Peter bowed and stumbled his way back toward the door that led onto the balcony, and left as he was bid, his heart squeezing inside him.

He didn’t think until he was at the far edge of it, feet planted in the spot that was precisely just without the anti-travel wards for the sake of those like him, those fools, those spies who could not yet afford to be seen approaching their lord in public. Then, when he was in place… _I can’t live with this. I can’t._

He would have to. He _knew_ he would have to. He knew, as he struggled to draw in a centring breath, that he had done this, had given, had betrayed, had surrendered, all the way up to this moment, just so he and his _would_ live. He and his mother.

He closed his eyes against useless, useless tears, dashing them away with a shaky swipe of his hand. Then he closed his eyes one more time, and Apparated home.

* * *

There was worse.

First, there was the raid, the raid that Peter stumbled and walked through, robotically, only ever half-thinking, because to think, to _really_ think about why he was there guarding the raging, half-blind Sirius, would kill him.

He shadowed Sirius until Sirius nearly fell, and then he forced a Portkey into Sirius’ shaking hand and sent him back to the house at the Cobb, and then he went back out into it, cutting down anyone that was unlucky enough to stumble into him.

After all that, Peter went home to his flat, bloodied and alone, only to immediately receive a summons.

“This will not be borne,” his lord said, his voice uneven, perhaps from the fact that he was pacing, or from rage. Peter had taken one look at that fine, still face and known to be extra careful. Extra quiet, as he pressed his sweating face to the carpet and tried not to react to the weight of magic pressing on him, slithering over him, combing the surroundings in a way that left objects shivering and rattling and shifting about.

“My lord,” Peter finally said, when the press of it had grown too great, and Voldemort had said nothing, asked nothing, “I swear, on my line, on my mother’s life, if I had known–”

“Be silent.”

Peter bit his lip, and obeyed.

Centuries later, or so it felt, his lord came to a gradual stop before him. “You will encourage the Longbottoms,” Voldemort said, “to leave Longbottom Lodge, if they are already considering it.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“You will aid them in the warding of their temporary home. You will ensure that both you and the Potter girl are keyed to the wards in some way.”

Peter had to mouth the words three times before he could make them come out. “Yes, my lord.”

“You are aware of where she lives, are you not? She has not moved?”

“N-no, my lord. She has– she hasn’t moved.”

“Her address, then. Before you leave, you’ll write that down.” Necessary, because of the way so many people had recently been choosing to obscure or protect their homes; the precise location of an Unplottable property faded from general memory, and was difficult to speak of if you hadn’t taken part in the unmooring ritual. Writing the thing down, though, was easier. “When the Longbottoms have moved, notify me.”

“Yes, my lord,” Peter said, though his heart squeezed hard. Frank, Frank had always been kind to him, in a rough, loud way that signalled his discomfort with the action. Even so, he’d had the rare trick of pulling it off without making you feel condescended to, without making you feel awkward for accepting help.

Trembling, Peter rose, fumbling in his robes for quill and parchment. He found both and felt, distantly, a sense of relief that he’d remembered it this time.

“Use the desk,” was the impatient order, and so he used it. Slowly, just that bit more slowly than he probably should have done, all while debating furiously with himself whether he could ask, whether he _dared_ ask that Neville be spared, or perhaps ask what was wanted with Lily.

He had held Neville. He’d never much liked babies, probably because his cousins had always had so very many of them to hand, and therefore to be carried and watched and changed, but Neville had been all right as babies went. Not very loud. And Lily– Lily had nothing left. _Nothing_.

But if Peter asked, if he went on his knees again and begged, there would be a price, and he was already in the middle of paying one. Could he afford another?

He couldn’t.

“Quite right,” his lord said, from a little way behind him, and chuckled when Peter flinched so hard he dropped the quill. “And in this case, I’m afraid there is no question of your affording it. It is entirely beyond you.”

“My lord, I–”

“You cannot deliver Dumbledore to me in chains,” Voldemort said, as he retreated to his favoured armchair and sat, heavily. “Can you?”

“My lord,” Peter said, dropping to his knees, his heart hammering within him, “my lord, you have not let me try.” He knew, already, what the answer would be. He’d offered, it had been the first thing he offered, reasoning that Dumbledore could bloody well take care of himself, that perhaps it’d even be a good thing, that it would put an end to all this. “I beg you,” Peter added, though he knew it wouldn’t help, wouldn’t move his lord to reconsider. _If I can’t pay anything else,_ he thought, _I’ll pay with this._ “I beg you, my lord, let me try.”

Voldemort looked at him for a long, awful moment, the amusement clear in the slight twist of his mouth, in the way he tapped his fingers on his knee. “The boy’s life is forfeit, no matter if indeed you could bring me anything I asked,” he said, softly, his tone almost– almost reassuring. “As for Potter, well, all I will say is that you may be reasonably confident that she will not die when she is brought before me.”

Peter wanted to cry. Wanted to press his head down against the carpet and scream his frustration into it. He didn’t. He bowed, just once more, while kneeling, and then rose and turned back to the desk, to retrieve the smudged scrap of parchment. “My lord.”

“Courage, man,” Voldemort said, as the parchment fluttered its way into his hand. “These next few days may actually bring an end to all of this.” And, as he smiled, Peter did his best to believe it, to believe it wholeheartedly as he bowed and bowed again, and withdrew to the balcony when he was waved off.

It was only when he was back home, back in the slightly dusty, echoing emptiness of his flat, back under the covers, that he could mentally uncurl, and think.

His thought: _It will never end. Never._

* * *

It ended, anyway, in the midst of a moment that was nightmare itself. Frank had– Frank had just _cut_ himself, and Alice let out a frantic, wordless cry, as blood sprayed from his neck, as the conjured knife winked out, as Frank slumped back onto the rapidly staining carpet.

“No,” she screamed, “no, no, _no_ …” And then her voice shut off, though her lips were still moving, and Peter, jiggling Neville’s crying, wriggling weight in both arms, realized that that was because his lord had warded her, just as he had warded Peter earlier.

“Here,” his lord said, flatly. “Give him to me.”

Peter’s hands shouldn’t have been steady, as he obeyed. It was odd, he thought, distantly. So very fucking odd that the same hands that hadn’t been still, the same hands that had trembled as his lord wrapped a faintly warm, calloused hand around his wrist, preparing for the Side-Along, were now stone steady. Unmoved.

Alice’s whimpering filled the room once again. That was odd, too; it wasn’t loud, he was sure she wasn’t being loud, and yet he could hear her so clearly that it bothered him. He could hear his lord’s slow, deliberate footsteps toward her.

 _It’s going to happen now,_ Peter thought, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn toward her, toward them. Though really, he owed it to her to watch, he could not. He would not watch.

“I am not entirely unreasonable,” Voldemort said, his voice low. “Your life is forfeit, yes, but your son’s? I can spare him. Speak.”

That, of course, was when Peter looked, when he had to look, thinking– _not_ thinking. Simply turning a little, to try to seek out Alice’s gaze. _Don’t think,_ he told himself, as he forced his eyes up from her half-bared body, her broken, twisted leg. _Don’t think, just look at her, just_ warn _her, and maybe…_

Whatever hope he’d had of, of communication, of warning, died when he looked into her eyes. “When he kills you,” she said, her voice slurred, her gaze bright, “suffer.”

Voldemort sighed. “Aurors,” he said, contemptuously, and moved his wand, and just like that, Alice was screaming again, seizing in place for a moment that felt like a whole, miserable year. “What kind of mother are you, that you won’t even bargain for him, that you won’t even take the chance?”

Alice, limp again, her limbs trembling spasmodically, did not answer.

“For that,” Voldemort said, “you will watch him die.” Alice flinched, but said nothing, letting out only a brief, pained grunt as a spell dragged her in Voldemort’s wake, moving her closer to the handsomely decorated crib in the corner of the living room. “Ssh.”

Neville had already been quiet, from the moment Peter passed him into the arms of his lord. He squirmed now, in wide-eyed silence, as he was lowered into the crib.

“ _Avada Kedavra_ ,” Voldemort said, his voice tight with satisfaction, and Peter wanted, he’d promised himself, he had a duty to Frank, to Alice, but he’d thought he could allow himself to refuse to see Neville go, but he watched, anyway, unable to look away.

So he saw the bright green spell lance into the crib, and stick. And _stick_.

“What,” was all his lord had time to say, before something tore, and the spell ricocheted right back at him, hitting him just below the neck. When he crumpled to the floor, it seemed to make no sound.

His wand rolled away from him.

Alice let out a brief, broken sob, still clinging to the railing of the crib. Still staring into it, so Peter couldn’t help but think… only for Neville to wail, to truly, loudly wail, like the world was ending.

Voldemort’s body shuddered, and just like that, Alice was in motion, nearly overturning the crib in her haste to snatch Neville up out of it and scramble back.

“Don’t,” Peter called out, uselessly. “Your leg–” But she’d managed it, she was crawling backwards, toward the extinguished fire, putting inch after inch between herself and the body, which had once again gone still. “Alice?”

When she looked at him, it seemed to take several moments for her eyes to focus, for her to really see him. Because she lay there, one arm around the still-crying Neville, one arm twitching, her gaze fixed on nothing, her eyes watering. When she _did_ see him, her empty arm stopped twitching, and her eyes widened slightly.

Peter took a step back. Another, and another, and– his back hit the wall, and then suddenly he was just scrambling sideways, almost running, even though there hadn’t been a single spell, whether from Alice, or from– from Voldemort.

Who was, who was no longer–

His wand. Peter, breathless, turned on his heel and summoned that painfully familiar yew wand more or less on instinct, and only after it thudded into his free hand did he see that Alice had been crawling toward it, toward where it had come to rest against the leg of the blood-spattered couch.

Her eyes. Neville was still crying, but she had left him behind her, coming after Peter. Coming for him with everything she had left.

Peter ran, tripping over the carpet, over– over _Frank_ , over the elf, the poor elf that had– and his left arm was aching, like he had already been cursed, like something was eating it from the inside out, starting from the narrow armband tattoo his lord had forced on him, as part of the price.

 _Aurors,_ Peter thought, as he ran for the ward boundary, over the damp, dark grass. _If I get them here, then maybe…_

If there had been no one else, that the Dark Lord had commanded to lie in wait. If there was no one else currently creeping into Lily’s house. Peter Apparated almost as soon as he could, aiming for the Atrium in the Ministry, and told himself he had no right to hope.

He hoped, nevertheless. He hoped very much that no one else had died, that there was to be no one else tonight, whose death he was responsible for.

* * *

For half an hour, Peter was, if not the hero, then the hero’s standard bearer. He looked into Sirius’ shocked, pale face and half expected the start of questions, of the usual suspicions, but all that happened was that he stood there in the Atrium, shivering in the wake of the Aurors that were flooding the fireplaces, and then Sirius stepped up and pulled him into a hug.

Peter wept. “Frank,” he heard himself whisper, “I failed him. I didn’t– I should’ve–”

“Ssh,” Sirius said, holding him even tighter, and so Peter bit his lip and kept it all back. “Do you want to stay here, while I…?”

 _You’ll never forgive me,_ Peter thought, and clung to him, wondering when he’d started to cling, when he’d fisted his hands into the front of Sirius’ robes. “I have to face her, Sirius, I can’t just hide.”

“No,” Sirius murmured, just as Peter had known he would do. His hand paused in the midst of a small, comforting stroke between Peter’s shoulder blades, and for a moment, that hand, its heat, their closeness, the fierce, heedless absolution it signified, was everything in his world. “No, Peter, you’ll stay here. Right here, okay?”

By then, Sirius had moved back a little, his gaze straying to the nearest fireplace, and so Peter had nodded, but not said anything. Which had made Sirius frown at him, take hold of his shoulders and give him a brief shake. “ _Stay here_ ,” he said, and then let go, his gaze half demanding, half begging. “All right?”

It felt momentous, now, to lie. It felt as if all the other lies had only been made, being offered to people as practice for this time, even though Peter knew that couldn’t possibly be true. He had always been a good liar. “I’ll stay, I promise.”

“You’d better,” Sirius said, and then backtracked the way over to the fireplace. “See you in a bit.” And then he was gone, and Peter was alone in the rapidly filling Atrium, alone amongst the increasingly excitable, chattering crowd of people relaying the good news, people with friends or connections in the DMLE.

It was time to leave.

* * *

### the break

Back to the flat first, quickly. Peter felt like an automaton, something charmed just slightly wrong, stirring up dust and knocking over things in his haste. It didn’t feel sensible to take his trunk, to pack it at all, it didn’t feel like he’d got any time for any of it, but he was also thinking, way back, way down inside, that if he wasn’t coming back here, he really did have to take everything he could.

Blankets; Arabella had knitted him one, last year. That went in as padding for the gobstones trophy he’d nicked from the back of the case when it was his turn in second year, and beside the trophy was his photo album, crammed with all sorts. Camera, well, that was– where _was_ that– oh, there, stuffed into the lower drawer of his bedside table, where it had sat for months on end, because Peter had got sick of taking pictures, sick of looking at the world burning down around him. The world he’d set fire to, in his own small, painful way.

It wasn’t the thing he wanted to think about, but it kept coming up. Remus had left his dove-grey sweater and what looked to be his second-favourite scarf; Peter stared at both items and wanted them, and then didn’t pack them, because it was bad enough that he had done what he had done, he didn’t need to add nicking his friend’s shite on top of it.

He still took the scarf, took it up and breathed in the smell of sage, which was what everything ended up smelling like after Lily’d put it through her brutally efficient three-cauldron soak-and-spell. His eyes were dry as he slung the scarf around his neck. They stayed dry as he scoured the apartment of hair, fingernails, skin cells, every slightest thing that could be used to track him.

When he stepped back out into the narrow hallway, the tears hit again. He had _liked_ this stupid fucking flat. It had been– not his, not just his, but enough of it to be really satisfying. James and Sirius had liked to swing by, back in the beginning, back when everyone had still had the time to waste. James always took the floor; Sirius would sprawl across the too-small couch, mumbling about how it needed replacing. Remus never did the floor or the couch, he always hefted the larger kitchen chair and brought it over; there were divots in the carpet where he’d liked to set it, faint but still there.

Lily, well, Lily would be on the floor between James and Sirius, or sprawled all over James.

“Please god that she isn’t dead,” Peter whispered, as he shut his door. His door no longer. “Any god. Anyone that’s listening, please.”

He very much wanted to linger; he did not.

* * *

Mum did not understand. More than that, she looked up at him and refused to; she pulled against his beckoning grip, she pinned his sleeve between firm fingers, she lowered her finely sculpted brows at him and refused, categorically refused to understand where he was going and why.

“You can stay here,” she said, waveringly, for the fifth time, and it was all Peter could do not to explode. “You don’t have to go off to wherever it is to– to wait for the Aurors to question you, Peter, that’s ridiculous.”

Peter, who had opened with a choked, fearful ‘I betrayed the Longbottoms to Him’ in response to her excited question about if he had heard the smashing good news, did not know what else he could possibly say to convince her. She’d looked up at him, her face like stone, and she’d reached out and squeezed his shaking hands in hers and said, in just that same wavering tone she always used to make him do what she wanted: _“Stay here.”_

“Mum, I will not stay here,” was all he’d said, then. Was all he could seem to say, now. It was painfully clear that she believed him, that she _believed_ his betrayal; it was also painfully clear, from the determined way Mum looked at him, that she wouldn’t be able to bear hearing about any of the other betrayals, the ones he had not yet mentioned. The ones he had feared to mention. “I’ve written down the Apparition coordinates for you; all you need to do is point them–”

She slapped him, hard. Then, as he reeled in shock, she reached out and grabbed hold of his wand hand, holding it so tightly that it hurt. “You _will_ stay here,” she said, her voice still wavering, her worried brown gaze fixed on him. “You were– you will tell them, when they ask, that you were under an Imperius.”

“You think they’ll swallow that, do you, when there is– when there’s a witness, a living witness who would rather rip my heart out than vouch for me?”

“Well, it’s simple,” Mum said, her grip on his wand hand easing just a little. “Say she was distressed. Anyone would be, in that situation. She may not have seen whatever she thought she saw.”

“Mum, it’s _Alice_!” Peter knew he was shouting, and knew that he shouldn’t be, but he couldn’t help himself. “It’s Alice Longbottom, she is an Auror, she will be believed over me, I can, we can muddy the waters as much as we like, but you know how she is, mum.” Just thinking of the look in her eyes, the look she’d turned on him, made him yearn to resort to spellfire to get away, though he knew very well that Mum would never forgive that. “She wasn’t hysterical. If I’d been any slower, getting out of there–”

“But it was You-Know-Who _himself_. Even without an Imperius, what– what would you have done? What were you supposed to have done?”

“Died,” Peter could not help but say, coldly. “Died in agony, like so many others.”

Naturally, that failed to make an impression. “So you’re alive,” Mum said, moving one hand to rest on his shoulder. “And it hurts. You feel– you saw– you’ve seen so much. And you think, now, that it should have been you, don’t you?”

Peter had thought he’d been prepared for this, been prepared to face this being used against him. It was his mother’s keenest weapon; she never deployed it without good reason. In third year, when he’d come home nearly feverish with shame, with bone-deep knowledge that his fixation on Sirius wasn’t just a phase, she’d sat him down and wrung the garbled confessions from him, and listened, her arm tight around him.

 _“Your father might have cared, initially,”_ she’d said, frank as always. _“He was always very proud of the name, the trappings of it. But he loved you. He would have wanted you happy, no matter the cost.”_

Now, she looked up at him, and Peter found himself weeping, even though she hadn’t yet said it, hadn’t yet said that Edmund Pettigrew’s chief desire on his deathbed was to be assured that his wife and son would go on without him.

“Peter,” Mum said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Don’t go. Don’t leave me yet. I only want you safe.”

In the end, it was that low, tight tone that convinced him, that steeled his terrible resolve. _She’s terrified for me,_ Peter thought, feeling sick. And, looking at her, it wasn’t clear whether she was more terrified of what the Aurors might do to him, or terrified that he might feel so horribly guilty that he’d accept whatever happened as his due.

“I won’t leave you,” he said. “But I won’t be here.” It was the work of a moment to stun her, while she stared up at him, uncomprehending. Peter shook as he hastened to sling an arm around his mother’s slumping form; he heard himself sobbing and tried to stop, to hold it all in, but he couldn’t. The best he could do was bite the inside of his lip and be careful as he moved Mum, careful not to jar her bad leg or disturb any of the crockery as he carried her through the kitchen and into the sitting room.

He shouldn’t have come here. He’d known that, _known_ it, and yet he’d come, as if daring the universe to fling an angry, vengeful Sirius in his way, or perhaps one of the others, one of any of his former friends, all of whom knew just how fond he was of his mother.

His mother, that had always thought too well of him. He’d known it would hurt to face her faith in him at a time like this, but he hadn’t thought it would cut so deeply. He hadn’t thought that if he confessed even one of his sins, she would look up at him and order him, in a trembling, desperate voice, to not even think of paying for them in the only way that was fit. _Order him_ , as if she thought he could not possibly be so craven as to betray his friends, and yet not wish to die.

“Love you, Mum,” he whispered, once, to her, as he settled her into her armchair in the sitting room. He kissed her on the cheek, and drew her usual blanket up to cover her properly. He stood there staring down at her like an idiot, wasting several precious moments, before turning on his heel and heading for the door.

There, Peter hesitated, darting one last glance over his shoulder, and then he opened the door and went out, shutting it quietly behind him.

 _One more thing,_ he told himself. _Just one more task, and it’s to France with you._

* * *

### the shattering

He had planned on being… decisive, let’s call it that. Not quite aggressive, but certainly not passive either. He’d set up ghost Apparition trails to two places, then returned to hole up in the darkest corner of the barn, as if mere darkness would help, would keep him from being found.

But by then, he was a rat again, and those instincts held sway. Burrow under some tattered burlap sacks, choose a spot near a nice-sized hole in the stone of the back wall, and wait.

And wait, and wait, twitching, scrabbling in the dust as little as he could help, because he was always _so_ much more bored as a rat, he always felt he had to be doing something, pawing at something, poking his nose into something, because there were so many scents about, so many tiny movements and smells and small sounds to wonder at, and consciously repress the urge to go sniffing after, he had to wait–

There. Sensing magic as a rat was, was oddly confused, he seemed to feel a spell all the way along his spine at the same time as his ears and his instincts told him that someone had just Apparated in somewhere out there, very quietly. The way even a half-trained Auror might.

Peter tensed. He shifted, paw by paw, until he was pressed against the stone of the back wall, his nose an inch away from the irregular hole in the brick, his every sense on alert. Voices, muffled by some sort of charm, drifted toward him on the fitful breeze that had just settled in.

 _Shit job they’ve got,_ Peter thought, idly, though still tense. _Haring up and down the country after me, when if I’d any sense I’d probably already have been on the continent…_

Another spell washed over him, making his all his fur stand on end. _Shit,_ he thought, fighting his first, overpowering urge to shift back to human, and then, thinking better of it, letting the change surge through him as quickly as he could.

He hated–

The first, too-long moment, when he felt too large, when the feeling of the floor beneath his hairless hands confused him, because he’d rushed the change again, he’d forgotten to try and sit up to make it easier to–

Reorient.

Wand out.

He could hear, now, the muffled, distorted cries that meant some sort of sound-dampening charm, and someone barking out orders. _Sirius,_ Peter thought, no, _knew_ , his blood running cold at the thought of him being the one to lay down a quick, tightly cast anti-Animagi ward around the perimeter of this farm. _He’s come for me._

Muffled footsteps, someone calling back or talking back beneath that fucking sound barrier, someone who wasn’t quite, who didn’t sound quite like Sirius. So there was at least one other Auror, or Auror-in-Training present.

Or it was worse than that, it was Remus, Remus and Sirius come to pick him up and tear him apart.

 _Not tonight,_ Peter told himself, his hand tightening about his wand. But it was still a long, long moment before he could make himself crouch down a little further, still listening to the call and response of those muffled voices. He breathed. He aimed his wand through the cursedly narrow hole.

At the last moment, he was weak again; he verbalized the spell. “ _Avada Kedavra_!” And then it was truly, desperately on.

* * *

He didn’t kill anyone. It was a close, close thing, closer than he’d liked; he’d never felt so angry with Sirius as the moment when they’d all three of them come in, angry Aurors in their stupidly dramatic, wildly flapping cloaks, and raised their wands and carved in a savagely strong anti-travel ward around the barn.

 _Have you learned nothing?_ Peter had wanted to scream. _You don’t just waltz in toward cover you don’t control…_ James had liked to rattle off Mad-Eye’s furious, emphatic warning word-for-word, with gestures and winking enough to make you piss yourself laughing, but they’d all grown used to being careful of all those famous warnings.

 _Duelling,_ Mad-Eye had said, over and over again, _is a_ distance _game. Too much, or too little, and you’re down._

Peter was as careful as he could be, cutting through the barn walls. Nets, the way James had taught them all, with the twist that kept the cutting lines invisible. With that spell rattling on, all that was necessary to set the stone dancing outward was force, a forceful tweak to the net, followed by the world’s least focused Blasting Curse, applied again and again and again.

He missed one of the Aurors, the first time. Narrowing his eyes, Peter shoved at them with the bit of wall he’d kept as a shield, and went on shoving his way onward until he felt the skein of the anti-travel ward clawing at his skin, desperately trying to keep him within its circle.

Stone was a remedy there, too. Stone for the ward, stone for the shivering Auror trying weakly to get up– not Sirius, Sirius was back there half-buried under what had been the barn roof. Stone again, for the Auror that had apparently shielded against that helpful bit of wall, and then, when they were sure they’d got the hang of holding off the blocks that were trying to hammer them down, they got a thick clod of earth and grit right in the eyes, forced through the gaps of their shield.

Sirius was the only one moving, soon enough. “ _Stupefy_ ,” Peter mumbled at him, and just like that, it was over with. “Wasn’t so hard, was it.”

He was breathing like a racehorse, all over sweat and dirt and dust, and starting to feel plenty of scrapes and stings from all the smaller shards of stone from the cutting and the shoving it at everyone, but he _had_ done it.

“See, Mum,” Peter muttered. “I’m alive.” He dragged himself through the anti-travel ward in short, painful heaves– Ministry-strength wards like this were just horrible, it felt like the thing was trying to hold on to his guts and perhaps succeeding in some small, painful way.

Or perhaps that was his heart, beating just a bit too fast. Or his mind, packed full of the sluggish way Sirius had struggled beneath his own weight of stone. “Come on,” Peter sobbed, “come on, come on, before they all wake up…”

By the time he crossed the foul-feeling boundary where the anti-Animagi ward had lain, Peter felt like collapsing into an ungainly heap. He’d rather have eaten the sad, bruised grass beneath his feet than stop and stand and gather himself, barely bothering with the three Ds before he Apparated. He did it anyway, again and again and again.

* * *

The last thing Peter did before he sneaked onto the ferry from Dover to Calais was to stop in a private bathroom. Not to change, not to clean himself up, he’d sorted that when he stopped in Canterbury a half hour ago. He stopped, instead, to fish out the other wand, the familiar yew length that had been burning a hole in his left pocket these last few hours.

He snapped it.

Crying, because– just how fucking _useless_ was it, was this last, symbolic gesture? No one would ever know. There’d be, there were probably already little whispers going about, wondering where The Wand had got to, if it had somehow been consumed upon Voldemort’s ignominious death. Perhaps even wondering if Voldemort had used, or had even needed a wand at all, never mind that people, well, _some_ people had seen him at it.

“It’ll be a legend,” Peter said, bitterly. He snapped and snapped and snapped again, glaring at the pieces, over the exposed, gleaming feather at the heart of it. _How_ dare _he have had a phoenix feather?_ he found himself thinking. _It should have been anything but that._

But all his anger, all his helpless resentment was moot. This was it; this was how Peter’s life in England ended, and he knew it was a better end than he deserved. Carefully, he swept the wooden shards and the bent feather up into a lopsided pile.

 _Probably should keep the feather,_ he thought, as he wrapped the pitiful remnants of Voldemort’s wand in a grubby handkerchief. _What do they go for these days, with all the shortages, three and a half galleons? You know you’ll need it._

Still, before the ferry left, he made time for a swift, furtive walk down to the water’s edge, and when he cast the shattered yew into the water, the feather went in as well. A covert, probably too-strong propulsion spell snatched up every bit he could still see, and sent it all down and out, down and on and on beneath the surging waves as far as he could make the water listen to him.

The handkerchief, he kept, because it could be washed. And because the edges were embroidered with the word ‘wormtail’, over and over, in what was probably the most hideous writing known to man. Sirius had needed something to practice his spellwriting on.

Sirius had always liked to write on Peter’s things.

Rubbing his eyes one last time, Peter watched the waves for a long, weary moment. Then his wand buzzed in his pocket, reminding him that it was almost time to be off, and then he was off, trudging back to higher ground, his hands stuffed deep in his trouser pockets, his mind as sluggish as his heart was heavy.

It was over. He was free, as he’d so yearned to be, months ago. Free, and loveless, and alone.

Free.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

>  **First, the character death warning, for a death that is briefly dwelt on:** Frank Longbottom
> 
>  **Actual post-story notes:**  
>  Let me know how you liked it ;). And yes, I 100% meant for there to be some Peter/Sirius subtext because in my headcanon for this universe, they were totally banging back in school. Which of course makes what he did feel even worse, but that's Peter for you.


End file.
